Epic Space Photos of the Week (Oct. 5-11)

NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg took in the sights this week from the International Space Station, capturing this magical view of storms over Ghana.

NASA/Karen Nyberg

City lights shine in Cairo and the River Nile delta as seen by NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg from the space station.

NASA/Karen Nyberg

On Oct. 10, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano posted some bizarre photos via his Twitter account from the International Space Station. A mystery rocket contrail could be seen rising above the Earth’s twilight horizon, which was later determined to be a Russian ICBM test.

NASA/ESA/Luca Parmitano

A Kreutz sungrazer comet was spied by the NASA/ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) this week falling toward the sun. The small icy body was hours away from being vaporized.

NASA/ESA

On Oct. 9, NASA's Jupiter-bound Juno spacecraft carried out a valuable speed-boosting Earth flyby. Shortly before close approach, Juno snapped this photo of the moon.

NASA

At close approach during Earth flyby, Juno also snapped a series of photos of our planet. Shown here is a rough mosaic of the raw images that were beamed back.

This week was an exciting time for astronomers studying Neptune. The tiny moon Naiad was re-discovered in Hubble archival data after disappearing since Voyager 2 discovered it in 1989.

NASA/ESA

The European Mars Express orbiter got up close and personal with a strange looking canyon on Mars called Hebes Chasma. The scar in Mars' landscape is up to 8 kilometers deep and has a unique mesa in the center.

ESA

This week we lost a NASA astronaut legend, Scott Carpenter. Carpenter, a member of the original Mercury Project, became the second US astronaut to orbit the Earth in 1962. He died after a stroke, aged 88.